The African Group of Negotiators (AGN) wants a formal agenda item to cover issues like the continent’s vulnerability to extreme weather and high borrowing costs. So far, what they have got is informal consultations.

With Egypt set to host the next UN climate summit in 2022, there is a chance to make a breakthrough – but African negotiators and advisors say it will not be easy.

“Africa is lagging in education, access to water, energy, and in extreme poverty – indictors that Africa needs to have special treatment,” Egyptian ambassador and former chair of the AGN Mohamed Nasr told Climate Home News. “The special treatment does not mean that Africa will access more money, but it’s about facilitating access to finance and making finance cheap because the more high risk a country is, the more the cost of loans it accesses.”

The coronavirus pandemic has driven many vulnerable countries deeper into debt, making it harder to invest in clean energy and resilience to climate extremes.

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Kamal Djemouai, an Algerian climate change consultant and adviser to the AGN, said the special needs agenda often ended up getting traded off against other negotiating priorities. “It will be difficult to get the agenda recognized despite it being among the most important issues for Africa,” he said.

It doesn’t help that the 54 African nations are not all equally invested in the goal. More than half – 33 – are members of the least developed countries (LDC) group, under which they are already prioritised for some kinds of international support.

But the whole continent needs space to develop and support to do so sustainably, said Nasr. “The challenges are increasing due to climate change. We are not competing on vulnerability. We want to ensure the policy space for Africa to develop in the right way and ensure that Africa gets its fair share of the finance.”

Frustrated by the stasis, some experts are calling for the African Union to step in, bringing higher level political clout to the issue.

“Africa’s position is sidelined on the final decisions taken at the UN conferences on climate change,” said Djemouai. “African ministers need supporting and strengthening at the highest political level by the heads of states at the African Union level to ensure balance in negotiations.”

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Alpha Kalogo, a Guinean advisor to the AGN chair on loss and damage, agreed. “AU should appoint a climate change champion who will act as the African spokesperson pushing the African position at the annual UN climate summits. The political approach uniting Africa will help streamline the LDCs’ sometimes very passive [stance] when it comes to the African circumstances agenda,” he said.

Kaloga added that Africa should organize itself through the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) and the AU moving to get at least between 15-20 ministers attending the meetings.

While several African politicians attended Cop26 in Glasgow to make statements, Kaloga said only three ministers – from Gabon, Kenya, and Egypt – negotiated to the end.

“Sometimes, the ministers attending can be reluctant to push for the African position because of their national interests. But the AU champion would be bound by the AMCEN and the AGN position but not national politics. It would ensure a united African voice at the Cops,” said Kaloga.

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“The farm I had called home for nearly 30 years was completely submerged, I was in shock and afraid. For two weeks I walked by the roadside speaking to myself,” Yator told Climate Home News. “Questions ran through my mind without answers. How will my children survive? Where do I resettle? It was a difficult time.”

Yator is not the only Kenyan farmer to suffer from severe depression and anxiety. Kenya is facing a mental health crisis, triggered, in part, by climate change. Many sufferers told Climate Home News that losses caused by drought, flooding and other extreme weather contributed to their distress.

According to the World Health Organization, Kenya ranks fourth in Africa for the most number of mental health cases, with 1.9 million people, 4.4% of the population suffering from depression. In June 2020, the government declared a mental health emergency after a recommendation by a task force.

Yator received no psychological support and turned to prayer to cope. Now, a year later, she sustains her family as a fishmonger in Kambi ya Samaki area, along the shores of Lake Baringo. While looking for work, Yator relied on friends and well wishers for financial support.

“When I was at my farm, I had water, firewood all from my farm. Today, I cannot afford to pay my daughter’s university fees – something I did at ease with the farm produce,” she said.

Pauline Yator started working as a fishmonger after she lost her farm to flooding last year. Photo: Sophie Mbugua

Heavy rainfall in 2019 and 2020 amplified the swelling of the lakes in Kenya’s Rift Valley, displacing more than 5,000 people, Samuel Mutai, director of Baringo county’s meteorological department, told Climate Home News.

As a result, 150 households live in tents an abandoned airstrip while thousands of others depend on strangers, relatives, and friends for shelter, he said.

Homes, schools, roads, health centres, and farmlands were submerged. In November 2019 at least 120 people died and 18,000 were displaced by floods and landslides in Kenya, according to the United Nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

The Baringo county deputy governor Jacob Chepkwony told Climate Home News that 3,087 households were displaced after flooding damaged their homesteads. More than 85 are disabled and older people, and overall damage to housing and shelter is estimated at 1.2 billion Kenyan shillings ($11m), he said.

Africa accounts for only 2–3% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions from energy and industrial sources. Data analysis shows that the one billion people who live in sub-Saharan Africa are responsible for just 0.55% of global emissions.

But despite its tiny contribution to global warming, cyclones, landslides, droughts and floods are becoming more intense and frequent in this region. The western part of the Indian ocean is warming faster than any other part of the tropical ocean while temperatures are rising 1.5 times faster in the Sahel than the global average, said Abubakar Salih Babiker, a climate scientist at the IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Center (ICPAC).

Babiker told the Climate Home News that extreme events such as floods, droughts, and landslides are happening faster than the community’s ability to recover from previous natural disasters.

“Over the last 30 years, the minimum temperatures in most parts of East Africa have increased by 1.2C and the maximum by about 2C, higher than the lower target of the Paris Agreement, said Babiker.

Jeremiah Cheptirim, a 76-year-old father of seven, stands in front of his house destroyed by flooding from Lake Baringo, Kenya (Photo: Sophie Mbugua)

Yator is not the only one whose life was turned upside down by natural disasters.

Jeremiah Cheptirim, a 76-year-old father of seven, from Ng’enyin village has been displaced three times since 2018, when his 30-acre farm was entirely submerged. His 71-year-old wife, Targok Bartogos, and five grandchildren have been squatting in a tent at the edge of their neighbour’s land. Bartogos cannot sleep at night.

“It’s too cold at night. Questions run through my mind wondering when we will manage a decent house. The hippopotamus defecates outside the tent every night. I have grandchildren in this tent, what if some day it decided to attack?” said Bartogos.

Over the years, Cheptirim has lost 30 cows, 16 goats, and 24 sheep to pneumonia and crocodiles.

Shadrack Chalo from Garashi village in coastal Kenya supported his six children through farming. His village has experienced drought since 2019, but the river flooded following heavy rains upstream and broke its banks.

“The floods destroyed my farm, carried away the generators, the irrigation pipe, and all other farming equipment I had bought. Due to lost income, I had to transfer my children to public schools.

“The problem was – where do you start? It takes time to plant and wait for the coconut trees and bananas to mature and earn you money. When all these trees die suddenly, the entire farm is destroyed, all cows are dead overnight from floods, and given some of us are old without the energy to start over, stress and death are inevitable for most of the farmers. Stress is our biggest challenge,” Chalo said.

Jeremiah Cheptirim and his wife Targok Bartogos sit outside the tent they have been living in since their house was flooded. Photo: Sophie Mbugua

In December 2019 the Kenyan government established a task force on mental health. Its review found out that of all medical patients at least 25% of outpatients and 40% of inpatients suffer from a mental illness. Climate change is identified as a contributing factor to mental illness, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder.

Kenya is not the only African country with a heavy mental health burden. In Nigeria, Health Think Analytics says 7 million inhabitants suffer from depression. WHO estimates that while 650,000 Ghanaians have a severe mental disorder, a further 2.1 million suffer from a moderate to mild mental illness.

In Ethiopia, a national health survey on depression identified that 9.1% of the population suffers from depression.

“Mental health issues are often forgotten amid the other life-threatening disasters like coronavirus, storms, droughts, and floods,” Boniface Chitayi, a consultant psychiatrist with the ministry of health and president of the Kenyan psychiatrist association, told Climate Home News.

Chitayi said events such as loss of property, loved ones, job loss, and forced migration, tend to cause higher rates of depression, and anxiety.

“Stressful events can trigger most serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia, substance use and abuse as a way of coping with increased stress,” Chitayi said.

The task force on mental health report shows that 75% of Kenyans cannot access mental health care. Kenya has only 71 psychiatrists for almost 50 million people, despite the large number of mental health cases in the country. Nigeria has fewer than 300 psychiatrists for an estimated population of over 200 million.

Elias Fondo, the Kilifi County mental health clinical officer, told Climate Home News that only about 22 out of 47 counties offer mental health services. As a result, access to mental health services is a constraint for most Kenyans who either cannot afford or travel long distances in search of assistance. Fondo said most mental health cases are often misdiagnosed due to lack of specialists.

Sidi Toya from Kilifi County said since the floods, her two children wake up screaming at night. Over the years, their school grades, and ability to respond to the teacher’s questions have worsened.

“Before the flooding, they would sleep soundly uninterrupted at night. We have gone to the hospitals seeking professional help, but the medics say the children are not sick. As parents, we do not know what to do next. We are not able to seek help beyond this village,” said Toya.

Countries like Kenya do not have a separate budget for mental health.

“Mental disorders account for at least 13% of all diseases but its allocation has been 0.1% of the entire budget. Counties in Kenya are not fully sensitised about mental health and their role. As temperatures and mental illnesses rise, Kenya needs a mental health budget that is separate from the overall health budget whose percentage reflects the burden of mental health illness in our country,” said Chitayi.

Cheptirim is planning to relocate his family again. He has identified a piece of land on a safer ground but has no financial means to construct a house. He depends on friends to raise over 300,000 shillings ($3,000) to build the house and relocate.

“I have managed to purchase land in a safer ground, but I have nothing left to build. I have talked to a few friends hoping someone with a soft heart can help with whatever amount they can manage. My only wish is to get my family to safety and warmth,” he said.

This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists.

The post Flooding and drought fuels mental health crisis in Kenya appeared first on Climate Home News.

With four children in tow and seven months pregnant, she returned to her father’s home, Namelok village in Kajiado, southern Kenya.

“I asked my father if I could get a portion of land to try farming and goat rearing. I needed financial means to feed, educate and care for my children,” Lasoi told Climate Home News. 

Lasoi’s father gave her access to two acres of land despite her brother’s objections. She could cultivate it, plant vegetables, rear her goats but not plant trees or make any long-term decisions without consulting her father.

But after years of farming, banks would not give Lasoi a loan for her business as she had no assets. “I thought of buying land but school fees and my children’s needs didn’t permit. I asked my father for at least a small portion of his 300 acres of land, but he was sceptical.”

It was only when she attended a training session on land rights by the Nasaru women’s group, which advocates for women to be included in decision-making, in 2016 that Lasoi learned she was legally entitled to own and manage land. 

“They told us that the constitutions and the laws in Kenya guaranteed women right to property. I did not know at that time” Lasoi says.

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Equipped with this knowledge, she convinced her father that she needed to own the piece of land she had been farming for years. 

About eight months ago, her father allocated her five acres of land as her inheritance, to which she now holds a title deed. 

“My father empowered me. I never thought I could own land after my divorce. I can finally plant trees and shield my goats from the heat, secure a loan, and sell if need be,” says Lasoi. “It’s priceless to finally make decisions over land.”

Alice Lasoi, pictured at the back, convinced her father to allocate her five acres of his land and use it to grow her own crops and rear goats to sell (All photos by Sophie Mbugua)

Owning land is key to helping women cope with the impacts of climate change, such as drought, and enables them to feed their families. 

In Kenya, Article 40 of the constitution guarantees a right to property for all. The Land Act, revised in 2016, requires spousal consent to sell land. The 2013 matrimonial property act allows women to register alongside their husbands for property acquired during marriage. The 2016 Community Land Act states that boys and girls above 18 years have a right to vote on community land decisions.

Regionally, the Africa Union, in its 2009 land declaration, recommends that its member states allocate at least 30% of land to women. Article 7 of the Maputo Protocol, the African Charter on human rights, grants both women and men rights to an equal share of joint property acquired during  marriage in the case of separation, divorce, or annulment.

“We have very beautiful pieces of legislation protecting women’s right to land in Kenya and in Africa but there is a big gap between policy and practice in many sub-Saharan countries. Since the colonial times, women have been excluded from land control and ownership. Our problem is enforcement,” Faith Alubbe, the chief executive officer at the Kenya Land Alliance, told Climate Home News.

It is difficult to enforce land ownership policies as rural women and community influencers are rarely included in drafting them, according to Evelyne Batamuliza, executive member of the African Development Bank Group’s Adaptation Benefits Mechanism.

“We move so fast in terms of making these laws but sometimes the people who these laws are made for do not know they exist as they never got a chance to participate,” Batamuliza tells Climate Home News, adding that land rights remains “a conversation among the elite in cities”.

Lorna Nashipei at her farm in southern Kenya where she manages her own plot of land and plants assorted vegetables

During the colonial era, the eldest male was registered as the family land administrator and no consideration was given to women. The male determined the rights of the women living in that homestead. In many African countries, the land laws are still colonially inclined.

“This generational exclusion of women on land has further affected their inclusion in community decisions to cope with droughts and floods [which are] becoming extreme and more frequent,” Juliana Rono, director of Nasaru Women’s Group, told Climate Home.

Since 2016, Rono has been working to build the resilience of about 150 women in dry areas of Kenya’s Kajiado county, with a climate adaptation grant, totalling 52 million Kenyan shillings ($466). The project was initially expected to run for three years, but has been extended for five years until June 2021. 

Rono says in her community, it was difficult for women to create alternative livelihoods as they do not own land.

“With the droughts and floods becoming frequent and severely disrupting pastoralism, it’s becoming critical to have an alternative livelihood to shield families from increasing poverty and malnutrition,” she says. 

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Pastor Stephen Saruni, a religious leader in Nameko, says frequent drought has driven men to sell their land. “Unfortunately, they sell without the wife’s knowledge, they relocate to towns, marry another woman leaving the wife and children in extreme poverty,” Saruni told Climate Home News.

According to the World Health Organization women and children are 14 times more likely to die when a natural disaster happens than men. 

Social norms demand women stay home to care for families while men leave for towns in search of jobs. Women and girls in poor countries spend 40 billion hours annually collecting water, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). 

According to Care International, women and girls make up 43% of the agricultural workforce in the global south. Women and girls from Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa, produce nearly 70% of the region’s food crops by volume. 

But despite this, less than 15% of women in sub-Saharan Africa have control over the land they farm, according to Batamuliza. A lack of land rights restricts women from making decisions about planting drought-resistant crops like sorghum or investing in alternative livelihoods like goat rearing, she says. 

In Kenya, the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) says women head about 32% of households, but individually hold only 1% of land titles. In 2018, an analysis by the Kenya Land Alliance found that out of the one million title deeds issued by the Kenyan government between 2013-2017, only 103,043 were given to women.

Mother-of-five Lorna Nashipei is working hard to overcome these societal barriers. Two years ago, the 38-year-old mother was surprised to meet a pastoralist woman growing and selling vegetables from her kitchen garden. 

“I was spending too much time travelling to the nearby town to purchase vegetables weekly. I spent 500 Kenyan Shillings ($4.50) on vegetables and transport. Yet I had five acres of land all left for cows and goats to roam around,” Nashipei told Climate Home News.

Lorna Nashipei started with a small kitchen garden, now she farms two acres of land in her village in southern Kenya

Nashipei convinced her husband to allow her to start a kitchen garden. Over time, the number of times she asked for vegetable money reduced, but the frequency Nashipei served the family vegetables increased. 

When her husband questioned how Nashipei was managing to serve vegetables regularly, without asking for money, she saw an opportunity to request a more significant portion of land. 

Today, Nashipei farms nearly two acres of maize, beans, sweet potatoes, peas, assorted traditional vegetables, and grass for her cows. Her husband is helping her fence the land to protect the crops from livestock destruction. 

She earns around 30,000 Kenyan Shillings ($269) selling farm produce during a good harvest. She has invested some of this money in a community savings programme, known as table banking, where members pool their savings and lend to each other. 

Nashipei makes an individual contribution of 3,000 Kenyan Shillings ($27) each month and has used the table banking system to buy goats, food and help pay for school fees. 

Nashipei is not the only woman succeeding in making land decisions in Kenya. Since the 2016 community land bill passed, Alubbe says two pastoralist communities in Laikipia county have successfully registered their land.

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In these communities, eight women have been included in land governance structures. They are registered as part of the groups harvesting sand, sold in nearby towns for construction, and as part of the committees that allocate grazing areas, something that has not happened before. 

“It is a good precedent,” says Alubbe. “The hope is that as more communities register themselves and their lands, women’s land rights will expand from access and use to control and ownership and that communities will learn from these two pastoralists groups where women make decisions on how land is used.” 

Nashipei’s initially sceptical husband has allowed her to access and manage two acres of land. Although the land title is still in her husband’s name, Nashipei is in the process of having her name included on the family title deed.

“Since he has seen the farm generate income and reduce financial burden on him, he has allowed me to grow crops without his permission. We have saved around 8,000-10,000 Kenyan shillings ($70-100) each month,” she says.

Rono hopes to see more women fight for their rights to owning and controlling land and make better decisions on how to adapt to the changing weather. But the gulf between statutory and customary laws makes this complicated, says Batamuliza.

“Statutory law recognises that women can control and own land, but on the ground, the customary laws controlling land allocations are already institutionalised culturally and socially. The customary law is more prevalent than the statutory law advocating for equality of land inheritance,” Batamuliza says.

“Unless there is advocacy in behaviour and an attitude change among the traditional decision makers and influencers in African communities, the two worlds cannot exist coherently. We will not see a lot of change just from adopting all these declarations, laws and policies.”

This article is part of a climate justice reporting programme supported by the Climate Justice Resilience Fund.

The post In Kenya’s changing climate, women are claiming land rights to feed their families appeared first on Climate Home News.

“I said to my wife Daisy ‘this will be one heavy downpour!’ But to my surprise, within a few minutes, the cloud landed on trees, and a pink-red shade replaced the vast green scenery.”

“That is when we realised the dreaded locusts had made a landfall next to our farm,” the 40-year-old father of three told Climate Home News.

By morning, the trees had lost the top green leaves, and the swarm of locusts had started to devour Mwagire’s livelihood – cowpeas, green grams, maize and Khat on his three-acre farm in Embu county, about 155 kilometres northeast of Nairobi.

The plague dashed hopes for a good harvest after rains in November 2019 ended a prolonged dry spell in the arid region, where it hadn’t rained since May 2018.

“This was the best planting season we had for the last five years. I anticipated to harvest at least 280 kilograms of cowpeas, 560 kgs of green grams, and 250 kgs of maize before the invasion,” he said.

Mwagire, who had invested about Kshs 8,500 ($84.5) on cowpeas, maize, and green grams seeds said he lost all the cowpeas within three days. With his maize developing sudden rust, he only hoped to harvest at most 40 kilograms of green grams after the ordeal.

Erosion crisis swallows homes and livelihoods in Nigeria

The Horn of Africa is suffering the worst desert locust invasion in decades, devastating pastoralists and farming communities in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea, and Uganda. South Sudan and Tanzania now are on the UN “watch list”. For Kenya, it is the worst infestation in 70 years and the worst outbreak in 25 years for Somalia and Ethiopia.

By January, data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated nearly 110,000 hectares were affected by the desert locust crisis in the Horn of Africa.

FAO says that cyclones in May and October 2018 in the southern Arabian Peninsula caused heavy rainfall and gave rise to favourable locust breeding conditions in Yemen. Lack of control measures allowed three generations of breeding to migrate through Saudi Arabia, Iran, to the horn of Africa.

Since October 2019, east African countries have experienced exceptionally heavy rains and widespread flash floods attributed to the Indian ocean dipole – a climate phenomenon in which the western part of Indian ocean near the east African coast was warmer than the eastern part.

The wind sent warm moist air across the East African coast, causing heavy rainfall.

The Horn of Africa is suffering the worst  locust invasion in decades. Photo: Sophie Mbugua

Abubakar Salih Babiker, a climate scientist at the IGAD Climate Prediction and Application Centre (ICPAC), told CHN the Western Indian Ocean has warmed rapidly over the past 100 years and is the fastest warming part of the tropical ocean system, a trend linked to man-made global warming.

The warming is causing more intense tropical cyclones in East Africa.

“October to December 2019 was the third wettest season in the past 30 years for the East Africa region. As a result, this heavy rainfall has resulted in increased green vegetation landscapes hence plenty of food for the locusts.

“The temperatures are warm aiding their egg hatching, and with the good winds, the conditions are suitable for their spread and movement,” Babiker said.

And the crisis is far from over.

ICPAC’s Fifty-Fourth Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forum predicts a wetter and hotter than usual March to May season in a wide area within the horn of Africa. Already the region is experiencing above-average rainfall during the summer season, which began in January.

Cyril Ferrand, FAO resilience team leader for eastern Africa, told CHN the countries have a vast swarm of desert locusts now maturing and laying eggs on the ground.

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And the rains complicate desert locust control as it is not suitable to spray insecticides during rains.

“Within the next three months, we could potentially have a 20 times bigger problem than we have now,” Ferrand said, given typical population growth if eggs hatch and the vast new generation of insects manages to find enough food and reproduce.

And in six months “we could have 400 times bigger swarms if we do not work on the control now,” he said.

Stephen Njoka, director of the Desert Locust Control Organisation for Eastern Africa, said one female could lay eggs three times, with each pond containing up to 100 eggs. “It is a big challenge as they are billion mobile swarms, some already laying eggs.” Njoka said female desert locusts can lay eggs at least three times in their lifetime, usually at intervals of about 6-11 days.

Lawrence Mwagire’s maize developed a rust after the passage of the locusts. Photo: Sophie Mbugua

Esbon Agira, a plant protection officer at the ministry of agriculture, livestock, and fisheries in Kenya, said the local monitoring team ministry has identified four areas in northern Kenya where the desert locusts have laid eggs – in Marsabit, Samburu and two spots in Isiolo.

Agira said controlling bands of young locusts, known as hoppers, will be easier as they do not have no wings for about two weeks. “But the challenge is identifying where the locusts are laying eggs.”

To boost on-ground surveillance capacity in Kenya, FAO Kenya has stated training 600 people as part of the National Youth Service (NYS) in collaboration with Moroccan desert locust experts.

Ferrand admitted the desert locust mapping and monitoring in Kenya, Ethiopia and Sudan is currently “sketchy.” “The control operation is still to be improved as we do not have all the means to control, survey, and conduct ground monitoring, but we are building this capacity.”

Ferrand said FAO was working with countries and the Desert Locust Control Organisation for Eastern Africa to build capacity for on-ground monitoring teams. The teams require GPS radios to monitor and map the movement of the swarms of yellow-coloured mature insects, since the colour indicates the areas where they are likely to lay eggs.

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But the biggest threat is yet to come, Ferrand warned.

“It is a race against time to have all the capacity in place to control the next generation of locust at the time the farmers are planting cereals in March and April. We are urging donors to allocate resources now instead of June,” he said.

Kenya has an on-ground monitoring team in every county, identifying and reporting the swarm activities. While the situation is mostly under control, according to Agira, incoming swarms from Somalia are a threat to efforts conducted so far.

“If there is still no control in Somalia and Yemen, new swarms and unidentified hatchings will continue being a significant threat,” he said.

FAO is requesting $76 million for Kenya, Somali, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Eritrea. Ferrand said the figure will rise as more resources for controlling and supporting affected communities’ livelihoods will be required.

New breeding could worsen the food security current situation for Mwagire and about 13 million others in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia who are currently critically food insecure.

For him, the locusts have dashed his hopes of buying two cows and nine goats to replace livestock he sold during the 2019 drought when he needed to raise money to pay his children’s school fees.

“I had planned to repurchase them with the harvest, but now I can’t. Instead of developing yourself, one keeps sinking into poverty,” he said.

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Just 50% of 4.5 million people in Harare and four satellite towns currently have access to the municipal water supply, the city authority told Climate Home News.

“There is a rotational water supply within the five towns,” Harare city council corporate communications manager Michael Chideme said. “Some people are getting water five days a week especially in the western suburbs, but the northern suburbs are going for weeks without a drop in their taps.”

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Chideme said people were either depending on water merchants, open wells, streams or several council-drilled boreholes. “The situation is bad, period!”

Dr Jean-Marie Kileshye from WaterNet warned Harare’s water was highly polluted: “Water-borne diseases linked to these boreholes are on the rise, but people have had to take in their own hands water supply because the utility has failed to provide water.”

Hardlife Mudzingwa, of Harare’s Community Water Alliance, said 10 typhoid cases were reported during the first week of July in the southwestern suburb of Glen View.

Cities around the world are facing increased water stress. Last week, the Indian city of Chennai began using trains to ferry in emergency supplies after rains failed. In 2018, Cape Town in South Africa avoided a city-wide water network shutdown by just a few months.

Zimbabwe is getting warmer as the climate changes and heavy rains and droughts are becoming more intense. In Harare, rains are expected in October at earliest, according to James Ngoma of the Zimbabwe Meteorological Services Department.

In 2018, a drought warning was issued to Zimbabwe by the Southern Africa Development Community. But those messages were not getting through, said Brad Garanganga, a climate scientist from Zimbabwe. Under-resourced meteorological departments had not been able to help policy makers “make decisions to take action on this type of important information ahead of time rather than wait until a crisis hit”.

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Harare obtains raw water from four dams: Harava, Seke, Chivero and Manyame. Harava and Seke are completely dry. This has led Harare city council to decommission the Prince Edward water treatment plant, which is fed by those dams.

This has left only one water treatment works – Morton Jaffray – supplying water to Harare and the four other satellite towns.

The dams that feed Morton Jaffray – Chivero and Manyame – are larger and closer to capacity, said Harare mayor Herbert Gomba. But they are “heavily polluted”, requiring more than 10 chemicals to purify. Upstream towns dump domestic, sewage, agricultural and mining waste into the rivers that feed the capital’s dams. The city is spending $3 million a month on water treatment chemicals, Gomba said, forcing it to restrict the amount released.

Decreased water levels at the highly-polluted Lake Chivero (Photo: Justin Mutenda/Herald)

Harare’s daily demand is around 1,200 million litres (Ml). Gomba told CHN the city was producing around 450Ml a day. Last month, Harare City Council recommended the water situation be declared a national emergency.

Community organiser Mudzingwa said he believed the city supplies to be less than 100Ml/day. Companies that packaged and sold bottled water to supermarkets and hotels were still receiving municipal supplies, while residents saw their taps turned off, he claimed.

Harare’s water system was designed to service a population of 350,000 people, said Kileshye. The last upgrade was in 1994, but the country has since been in near-constant economic crisis. The city council’s website says some sections of infrastructure have been in use for more than 60 years, “way beyond their economic life of at least 15 years”.

Chennai: Trains deliver emergency water to drought-hit city

With this in mind, in 2011, the Zimbabwean government signed a loan of $144m from the China Export-Import (Exim) Bank to upgrade its water infrastructure.

The government has accessed $72m, according to Gomba, with which the Morton Jaffray water treatment plant was rehabilitated. But five distribution centres and two sewage treatment plants were yet to rehabilitated.

Mudzingwa raised questions over how the other half of the loan was administered, saying: “A 2014 internal audit report produced by City of Harare showed that there was inflating of quotations on materials that were bought through the loan. Corruption marred the water project with commodities overpriced, hence the government was not able to access the full amount.”

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Gomba rejected corruption allegations. “We never received liquid money, but equipment procured from China. It was due to the government’s inability to honour previous loans following the economic crisis that hindered access to the balance, not corruption.”

The mayor added that non-payment of residential and commercial rates was hampering his administration from effectively delivering water. Even after rehabilitation, he warned supplies from Prince Edward and Morton Jaffray works would reach only 770Ml per day, leaving a shortfall of 430Ml.

“We have to construct three new dams, to add about 840 million cubic metres. But over time Harare has to decommission the old dams and allow them time to rehabilitate naturally,” said the mayor.

Map: Two of Harare’s four reservoirs, Chivero and Manyame, seen to the west of the city, are heavily polluted.

In 2016, the Zimbabwean government signed a contract with a Chinese contractor Sinohydro to construct a dam northeast of the capital Harare. Mudzingwa said construction of Kunzvi-Musami Dam – 67 km outside Harare – was estimated to cost $850-900 million. But the project was not new.

“The discussion on the construction Kunzvi-Musami Dam as an alternative water source started as early as 1990 but is still not ready,” he said. “The central and local government have failed us on water supply.”

Mudzingwa agreed an urgent infrastructure upgrade was needed to solve the water challenges in Harare but he stressed the need for budget transparency. “We must also ensure citizens are involved actively in water governance framework and smart coordination between water sectors,” he said.

Council spokesperson Chideme said the city was running education programmes for citizens, “to minimize pollution of available water resources and while effectively using the available water sparingly so that we do not run out of water”.

“Technology by itself will not be good enough,” said WaterNet’s Kileshye. “The people across the whole spectrum from households, industries need to be made aware that they are part of the solution to sustainable water in cities.”

This article was produced as part of an African reporting programme supported by Future Climate for Africa.

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